


Mirror Mirror

by AmunetMana



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: AU, Fool's Gold, Koz the ex-soldier, M/M, Pitch goes people-watching, Pitch that's not how you relationship, and finds more than he bargained for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 16:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmunetMana/pseuds/AmunetMana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pitch has always possessed the terrible habit of people watching. It is a habit he has never been able to shake nor explain, until one fateful day when a single encounter changes his life and purpose forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror Mirror

_"I had a dream."_

 

_"Was it a bad dream?"_

 

_Rustle._

 

_"No, it was...yes, it was."_

 

_Stroke._

 

_"What was it about?"_

 

_Silence._

 

_Tension._

 

_"You can tell me."_

 

_"I dreamt I fell through a mirror, and into another world, and I couldn't climb back out."_

 

_"Wasn't it a nice world?"_

 

_"I don't know. But it wasn't mine, so I didn't want to be part of it."_

 

_"But what if it was a better world?"_

 

_"The other side of a mirror is always a worse world."_

 

_"But how do you know your world wasn't the worse one?"_

 

_Pause._

 

_"Then I wouldn't want to know."_

 

_"..."_

 

_Skin pressed against skin._

 

_"Then thank goodness it was a dream."_

 

_~_

 

Pitch was a private man. At the same time, to his occasional great irritation, he found himself a people-watcher. He would exit his house far more often than he ever thought he might, and would simply find himself a location to sit and watch. It bemused him; ordinary people were after all so very _ordinary._ But it was worse than that. Ordinary was blandness, but it was also pettiness and shallowness and high pitched _oh em gee I soooo love ur shoes!!_ and _what a bitch, wouldn't even put out,_ and _can't you even buy the milk don't you know how busy I am already I swear you do nothing to contribute-_ Pitch wanted to lock himself away from it all, away from the sea that was ordinary, the poisonous mundane that lapped at the edges of his life.

 

And yet still he watched them. Scurrying past, going about their tiny little lives, never noticing the too-tall black dressed man whose sharp eyes followed their every movements, and whose lips were too tightly pressed to even sneer in dismissal of them.

 

He should stop.

 

Something always made it impossible for him to stop.

 

Pitch never knew what it was that made him keep watching people, the masses he despised. Until that morning. It was that morning that changed everything, and made his infuriating habit of so many years make sense.

 

It was with a grim face that Pitch had left the house that morning, glaring into the blue sky like it was at fault for everything that tumbled around his head like so many loose parts. He descended the short flight of steps from his doorway to the pavement, thankful at least that there were few people on it; he could at least walk in peace. He didn't know where he would head to yet today. It was chilly, understandably so for late November, but bright and cloudless. Good weather for wearing scarves and going for long walks, if that was your thing.

 

It wasn't Pitch's, but it still ranked higher than sitting in a coffee shop, which he had done the week before and loathed with such an intensity that people had genuinely shied away from the tables surrounding his in response to his expression and demeanour. Parks were fast turning into his usual people-watching haunt. He didn’t particularly like park benches when they were cold and wet, but a decent coat dealt with that. After the events of that day, however, they would become the only place he ever went.

 

The day had started so badly, how could he have ever known how it was going to turn out? He had barely been able to drag heels out of the door, the solitude of the walk barely aiding his foul mood. Even as he reached the park, he wasn't at all sure he'd even stay. As much as his habit demanded to be indulged, that very morning the frustration of the week was catching up to him. At times, he enjoyed not having - not _needing_ a profession, but it did on occasion leave him so terribly burdened with plenty of time on his hands. He settled on the bench; wet, but thankfully free of any plebeians that would otherwise disrupt him. The park was almost empty, and Pitch didn't see the man at first.

 

Afterwards, he'd question how he'd ever missed him; how he hadn't _felt_ his presence instinctively. Really, it all came down to the damn dog.

 

Pitch hadn't been looking, had been focused on settling himself down on the bench, assuring himself that the wetness would not seep through to his skin and settle like cold fingerprints where it was not welcome. The only warning he had were the sounds of a bounding motion, and after that, the faint call of a man's voice.

 

"Jack! Jack, no, bad boy!"

 

Pitch's head had just begun to turn, when suddenly he found himself with a body-full of dog, a large, shaggy white thing that bounded up at him, all tongues and fur and Pitch couldn't help himself; the next thing he knew, he'd let out an unmanly squawk of surprise, and found himself slipping off the bench and onto the dirty floor. This unfortunately provided the dog with far too great an opportunity to pass up, apparently deeming it necessary to climb completely on top of Pitch, licking and snuffling at his face. Pitch could only scrunch his eyes close and wait, and he was only released as the shouting voice drew close, until it was practically over him, and suddenly the dog was being pulled away and Pitch was blissfully free from its seeking, over energetic actions.

 

He scrambled to his feet immediately, brushing down his likely ruined clothes, and trying to scrub his face as vigorously clean with his sleeve as possible, before turning his gaze on the dog and its owner. Words had been building on his tongue, backing up in his throat, a torrent of scathing criticism that overlapped into verbal abuse, but as he got a good look at the man, they vanished. Didn't die, or fade. They evaporated onto the air as his mouth fell open, a stream of white air escaping as he could only stare.

 

The man couldn't have seen him, still fussing over the dog...'Jack', he kept calling it, as he struggled with a lead, attempting to click it onto a blue collar around the beast's neck. Pitch hoped, indeed, that he hadn't seen him at all. This was his moment, his perfect, _perfect_ moment. A moment that made all the sitting, all the watching make sense, this was it, the pinnacle of the search he hadn't even known he was conducting. Because it was himself. Kneeling before a dog, finally succeeding in restraining it with the lead, was his mirror image. Oh it was far from perfect, more like looking in the twisted mirrors of funfairs than anything else, but there was too much too similar for it to be anyone else.

 

Pitch clutched at his chest, the pain sudden and sharp, like an aching cavity that could not be filled. Where there a rational part left in his mind, he might wonder if the dog had bitten him perhaps, or stepped on in just the wrong way by one of its paws, but rationality was the furthest thing from his mind. Not when there was an emptiness in his chest that could only be satisfied and filled by the man before him. By the part of him he hadn't known was missing.

 

Then, suddenly, the man was standing, turning towards him with apologies on his own lips, offers of making it up to him, and Pitch froze. He couldn't be seen. Couldn't let the man see, not here, not now, couldn't let him shatter it. He spun on his heel and strode away, only two paces from bursting into a run with every step. He couldn't even risk looking behind him, would not take the risk as Odysseus had, would not risk breaking something that had not even begun. For whatever reason, likely the intervention so something greater, something that understood just what had happened, the man didn't follow.

 

~

 

 _Pitchiner._ Kozmotis Pitchiner. The first name was unusual, was different and strange and tasted like space and stardust as Pitch whispered it to himself. But it was the second name that truly captivated him. That made him suck in breath, unable to say it out loud lest it break a spell and reveal his eyes liars. Pitchiner. Pitch-iner. A small gap, a pause for breath, drawing the name into distinct parts. Revealing his own part in it. His deep-seated, fundamental necessity. Kozmotis Pitchiner was so much more than Pitch Black, was full of life, rich with it in the way Pitch was rich with petty metals and plastic cards tuned to digital numbers. Kozmotis was more, but he was also not complete. Not without Pitch there, nested in his name. Pitch Black was a part of Kozmotis Pitchiner, and he had simply never known it till this point. He was the man's shadow, an elongated, waif of a copy, but still there, still connected, part of Kozmotis, part of him, unnoticed perhaps, overlooked...

 

_Until now._

 

The connection was undeniable. Pitch had found the man, after all, by putting a hastily-taken photo of himself into the search engine and eventually, after only a few moments of scrolling, the machine had given him back the face and identity of the only thing missing from his life. The Internet was shockingly sordid with the ease in which he had located his double, and procured an excessive amount of information about him. Normally Pitch was coolly disgusted and dismissive of social networking, of fads like twitter and Facebook, which would inevitably fade and be replaced in time with the newer versions. In this instance, however, he was prepared to make an exception in order to revel in the bountiful information that would prove invaluable to him in his efforts to bring Kozmotis into his world.

 

He knew, for example, that Kozmotis was ex-military, ex only due to a wound in his leg that had just not healed right, and left him with a limp. Not bad enough for the apparently proud man to use a cane, but enough that it was visible when he walked. Pitch frowned. It seemed like a small reason, somehow, to be discharged. But there was no mention of anything else on the page, so Pitch merely tucked away the information and continued to explore. The man also appeared somewhat horrendously attached to his beast of a pet; the overgrown thing appearing in every picture the man was in. It made Pitch’s viewing a somewhat dimmer experience than it might have been.

 

Apart from one picture, far far back, buried under more recent news. Kozmotis was not looking at the camera in the picture. Instead, he was looking down at a dark haired girl that was cradled in his arms; folds of a grass-stained summer dress spilling over his arms and around her tiny body. Her face was scrunched up in frozen laughter, and the look on Kozmotis’ eyes was enough to make Pitch’s heart stop. Love. Pure, unadulterated love. He was looking at the girl as though she was his entire existence.

 

Pitch loathed her instantly with every fibre of his being. What right had she, a tiny, _insignificant_ being, to hold Kozmotis’ gaze like she was special? Like she had some kind of worth? She had no right at all. No right to take what was Pitch’s, what should have been his all along. Because that was the real certainty here, the thing Pitch was absolutely certain of. Pitch needed Kozmotis, and Kozmotis, he...he needed Pitch too. But it was ok, Pitch could be understanding. He could understand why they had never found each other before. It was the fault of those around Kozmotis, the fault of his ridiculous pet and the insignificant child; they were distractions. Distractions who deliberately kept Kozmotis away, who tried to rip him from where he so obviously belonged - with Pitch.

 

Of course with Pitch.

 

He would have Kozmotis made safe, would return him to his rightful place. He would rid the man of all the distractions. Pitch closed his eyes, leaning back from his computer. _Yes._ And with those distractions gone, with Kozmotis finally able to see...oh how he would thank Pitch. How he would fall to his knees, and praise Pitch for making him see, making him understand.

 

How he would _love_ Pitch.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Pitch that is not how it works wtf is wrong with you.
> 
> ((Please comment and say what you think~))


End file.
